Annotated List of the Birds of South Australia

Maps Annotated List of Distribution maps have been scrutinised in order to correct errors of identification or of data entry, such as the Birds of South incorrect geographical coordinates, and are posted on the Birds SA website at: https://birdssa.asn.au/birding-info/distribution-maps/ This work has largely been undertaken by members of Australia the Birds SA Vetting Subcommittee of Andrew Black, chair, Graham Carpenter and Lynn Pedler, with Colin Rogers and John Hatch for seabirds and shorebirds, 2020. Fifth edition, Version 5.1 and for museum records by Philippa Horton and Brian Blaylock. Sight records from beyond the usual range of a species are shown on the map if adequate corroborative evidence has been obtained; if not they Philippa Horton, Honorary Research are retained as unconfirmed. In other instances Associate, South Australian difficulties arising from field identification, such as the crows and ravens (Corvus spp.) and Brown vs Inland Museum; Collection Manager, Thornbills (Acanthiza pusilla and A. apicalis), have Birds, SA Museum 1984-2019 meant that in regions where these species abut or overlap some relatively arbitrary decisions have been made to include certain records but not others. Other Brian Blaylock, South Australian species show seasonal or irregular dispersive Museum; Secretary, Birds SA 2000- movements that are not yet reliably established and are not depicted on the maps. Finally, while the maps 2018 are reasonably comprehensive, they include only records from the databases accessed for this list. There Andrew Black, Honorary Research are others for which necessary details are still sought. Associate, South Australian The maps give a good indication of where a species Museum might be encountered but on rare occasions any bird may appear well outside its known range as depicted. In such instances the observer is encouraged to contact Birds SA, SAMA or DEW and to supply a The following list includes all species of birds reliably description, with a photograph if possible, so that the recorded from free-living populations within South record can be assessed for possible inclusion in the Australia during the period of European settlement. BDBSA. Use of Birds SA’s Rarities Committee Record There are 317 non-passerines (of which seven are Report Form or BirdLife Australia’s Unusual Record introduced) and 183 passerines (six introduced), Report Form (URRF) is encouraged. An indication of totalling 500 species for the state. Appendix 1 at the the likelihood of encountering any species in a end of this chapter includes a) species for which particular region of the state will be found in A Field List records are unconfirmed or rejected and b) of the Birds of South Australia 5th edition (version 5.2) introduced species for which there are no current feral (Blaylock et al. 2020). Currently the previous version populations. We have extended our earlier list (Horton, (5.1) is available on the Birds SA website at: Blaylock and Black 2013) for this fifth edition by naming https://birdssa.asn.au/wp- all subspecies for the first time. content/uploads/FieldList_5.1.pdf Taxonomy and Nomenclature Distribution Since the third edition (Robinson et al. 2000), a large As in the first (Aslin 1985), second (Watts 1990), third volume of research, principally DNA-based, has (Robinson et al. 2000) and fourth (Horton et al. 2013) contributed to numerous changes in the taxonomy of editions of this list the distributional information has Australian birds. The landmark work of Christidis and been compiled from several sources. They include Boles (2008) summarised this research up to the time of specimen data from the South Australian Museum its publication and was used as the basis for our 2013 (SAMA) and other Australian public collections through list, but the flow of newly published phylogenetic and the Atlas of Living Australia, and sight records from related studies continues. We have assessed those BirdLife Australia, Birds SA (South Australian relevant to the SA avifauna and have made Ornithological Association), and the Department of taxonomic and nomenclatural changes accordingly. Environment and Water (DEW) that collectively We have used web-based resources extensively in contribute to the Biological Database of South making our decisions, including Zoonomen – Birds of Australia (BDBSA). the World (Peterson 2019), Avibase (Lepage 2020), and the IOC World Bird List version 10.2 (Gill et al. 2020). We have found the IOC List particularly valuable 1 because it is frequently amended on the basis of They suggested that the question might be truly published research and provides pertinent references irresolvable. Reddy et al. (2017) showed that the and links to further information. We follow the species different findings of the Jarvis and Prum studies resulted and genus names of the IOC List closely and provide not from inadequate taxon sampling in the former or explanations where they differ. inadequate genetic data in the latter but from their use of different genomic data types, chiefly introns in Within each family we have arranged genera and the former and exons in the latter. species in alphabetical order. Because the placement of genera within many subfamilies is uncertain, we Jarvis et al. (2014) found it likely but uncertain that the have omitted the latter with one exception, naming earliest separation from all others was by a group that only the two (gulls and terns) within family Laridae. included pigeons [plus an old-world sister clade of sand-grouse and mesites] as well as the now familiar grebe-flamingo pairing. Then followed the nightjar- Higher-level Classification swift-hummingbird clade and its sister clade of cuckoos and bustards. They found that the charadriiform order of shorebirds, gulls and terns is sister It is well established that modern birds (Aves, subclass to the gruiform order of cranes and rails, and Neornithes) fall into two groups: the Palaeognathae tropicbirds are sister to the kagu and sunbittern. (ratites and tinamous) and the Neognathae (all remaining groups), and that within the latter there is a Prum et al. (2015) proposed successive major sister major early division between the Galloanseres clades, with basal pair (first to separate) the nightjar- (landfowl and waterfowl) and all other birds, the frogmouth and swift- hummingbird groups. Next came Neoaves (nomenclature follows Cracraft 2013). bustards and cuckoos, coupled with the pigeon-sand- grouse group. [Suh et al. (2015) placed cuckoos closer Within the Neoaves, classification at the order and to pigeons than bustards but between the two.] Third family levels has been advanced by three extensive was the gruiform order of cranes and rails. The grebe- multi-author genomic studies, those of Jarvis et al. flamingo clade was next, included within the larger (2014), Prum et al. (2015) and Suh et al. (2015). While waterbird assemblage as sister successively to the their findings differ in some details, all agree on a core charadriiform order, to the tropicbird-sunbittern group landbird clade and a core waterbird clade. The and to the remaining waterbirds, as above. [Suh et al. landbird clade includes the passerines and their sister (2015) found the gruifom, grebe-flamingo, group the parrots, and falcons as sister to that pair (in charadriiform and tropicbird groups among the Australaves), as well as the other diurnal raptors, owls unresolved network and not with core waterbirds.] Last and the kingfishers and allies (in Afroaves). Among the was the landbird assemblage with accipitriform raptors waterbird clade are penguins, tubenoses, storks, the sister to all others in the group. gannet-cormorant group and the herons, ibis and spoonbills, now allied with pelicans. While resolution may remain incomplete for some time, the IOC List (Gill et al. 2020) has provisionally aligned Among the remaining orders there is uncertainty about itself with Prum et al. (2015) in its draft Orders of Birds relationships at the base of the neoavian radiation, i.e. (28 June 2019), as it works towards improved alignment among the earliest evolutionary divergences, a super with other international authorities. We now follow this radiation that occurred around the Cretaceous- sequence of orders and families, departing Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary 66 million years ago. considerably from the sequence used in our 2013 Radiation in the above landbird and waterbird groups edition. The newly published work of Kuhl et al. (2020) came later, and their phylogeny is clearer as a establishes a well-resolved avian tree of life, with the consequence. Each of the three major studies novel use of transcriptomes (sets of RNA sequences examined different components of the genome. They both coding and non-coding), together with the agreed on the individual components of most groups inclusion of all non-passerine families in their analysis. but differed in their order of placement. Once their results are assessed, further changes in the sequence of orders may be anticipated. The Jarvis group’s whole genome (ca 42 million base pairs) approach accessed chiefly non-coding introns, but also exons and ultraconserved elements, for 48 species representing all neoavian orders. The Prum group employed a method of ‘anchored hybrid Changes at family, genus and species enrichment’ with a smaller genomic dataset (ca levels 400,000 base pairs) of chiefly coding exons but a larger sample of 198 species, and expressed greater A vast quantity of local and international research has confidence in

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